Aldebaran said:

It's similar to the idea of a 'level 5' trip - if it gets mentioned a lot then people will start threads asking 'was this a level 5 trip?'

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Northerner said:

Did you actually die? Were you actually nothing? When reborn were you shocked that you were human again? If you answered no to any of these questions you did not experience ego death, merely dissolution. Like I said, everyone is crowding around this thing claiming it's so great, but meanwhile they talk about during their ego death experiences saying how they could see their lives so clearly, how it all made sense, how they were one with the universe and communicated. All of these things mean they did not experience ego death. The ego by definition is "I". If there is any "I" or "my" left in the experience it is not ego death. If there is no similarly distinct point of rebirth as there was death it is not ego death.

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Yes, you have a sort of a definition here.  But what it leaves out is the majority of what Buddhism (among others) teaches - and what you can experience firsthand - that recursive ego-based consciousness isn't the be-all, end-all, and only way of experience.  Just to say that some particular experience where there is no mental function ranks as that particular thing doesn't mean much in itself.  General anesthesia features no mental function, but most people don't chase it since there's no "there" there, and coming out of it is very disorienting.  Every night you voluntarily surrender consciousness and every morning you boot it up again.  Sure there are these interludes of dreams which are sort of like ordinary consciousness interspersed in it but they rarely rise to full egoic sense of self.

What I'm saying is that beyond ordinary thinking (involving the self as an object of reference) lies a perfectly valid sort of thinking that doesn't have that impediment.  You can indeed get this through psychedelics, and many do, but when you try to talk about the temptation is always to cast it as "I" because it sounds just too lame to say something "and then this fully functional but nevertheless non-egoic sense of self awareness started to rapidly sort through memories as if they were real". 

Once you get used to that sort of experience it becomes very useful because it never gets in the way of thinking like the "I" does.  It has no sense of self to try to impress or defend or account for.  So immediately you get to jettison a whole lot of essentially useless baggage.  But not to worry, it's quite capable of running an imitation ego anytime it's called for, which a lot of people apparently find comforting in the mundane world and all of its tricky interactions.

I suspect that the whole appeal of "ego death" as a goal stems from its usefulness as a description of an ineffable experience. This kind of thing is really nothing more than a marker of an experience that resists verbal parsing.  But many people have some sort of idea (however ill defined) of what "ego death" is supposed to be, so rather than it being some kind of pissing contest it's more like a description of some commonality.  I.e.,it marks you as inside a self-defined tribe to which you desire to belong.  And that's a very normal human sort of goal.

pineninja said:

Attributing ones experiences in a way that can ranked against anothers (as a death or any other thing) is not only pointless but damaging to your cause.

Stop looking and measuring yourself against others in a search for your own personal growth.

Nobody on here is egoless, if there is id like to know what part of them posted.

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PrimalSoup said:

There's brain damage and then there's transcendent insight.  I've had both, the first a concussion that took months if not years to recover from, and the latter many times from shrooms - which also helped heal the first.

Personally I gotta say I don't think discussions like this have a lot of value.  People that might be helped by it tune it out because they haven't seen past it yet, and nothing that's said is going to affect my trips - or the vast majority of other peoples trips I expect - in any way at all.  Plus everybody has to take their own journey, and pretty much nothing you can say could prepare them for what that journey really is.

I know I don't agonize in the middle of transcendent trips "is this ego death?"  I gave all that shit up many years back, after a extended but futile period of trying to accomplish exactly that - demolish ego while tripping.  I just ended up feeling bruised and annoyed as a result.

If you want to lose your ego lose it in meditation.  There at least, while completely sober, you can explore that tiny little time interval that lies between the origin of thought and its absorption by active ego.  There you can see directly how the ego mind is nothing more than a construct built on top of original mind, which pervades the universe (basically), a sort of a lie.  You can see how to turn it off and turn it on if you want to.

I think people who get interested in consciousness manipulation through psychedelics often have a genuine desire to lose the impediments of mundane reality.  Ego mind is attachment in Buddhism.  Attachment brings suffering.  Buddha had it right - end attachment and you end suffering.

It doesn't mean that ending suffering creates bliss.  This is another lie.  What you get instead is peace.  And I'll take that any day.

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kabel said:

redgreenvines said:

when I see a mountain, I do not take it personally. It is a wonderful thing as it is. I do not want to climb it at all.

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Fair, some people have less energy and physical health than others. But that does not change the fact that ultimate/peak experiences exist, and if one wants to aim for them they can. To say it's "waisting your ambition" is just judging with your own bias.

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redgreenvines said:

and if you pause for a minute to think about it, how would you imagine you might be after you get your ultimate peak experience, the attainment of which you are so highly motivated.

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So motivated as to assume that all people must also be equally motivated.

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How did that motivation take root in your mind?

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How come you are so certain it must take root in another person's mind?

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I think that the drug culture lore and the desire for acceptance and belonging are entangled with this obsession with ego death.

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Dark_Star said:

The peak of a true ego death is not something that described in terms of beautiful, wonderful or dark. It can't be described at all, because there is no you. There is no observer & there is no observed. There's no memory of it. If you actually remember the pinnacle of an "ego death" experience, it wasn't really ego death. The parts you remember & attempt to describe are the journey there, and the journey back. What happens in between is a mystery.

I get the pull the newbs are expressing towards it. I was the same way when I was younger, and I did experience true ego death multiple times, and strong ego dissolution more times than I can count. Certainly very misguided, but that fit with headspace & personality at the time. Endless curiousity + the attitude that more is better. And the belief that I knew far more than I did....lack of humility of youth. the reality is, as others have stated in this in thread, it's not the be all end all. Whatever experiences you have don't matter nearly as much as what you actually get & integrate from them. Felt a lot of reboots & blank slates earlier on in my psychedelic career......only to return to where I was at before. I've also had a real NDE. Not a "I took a bunch of psychedelics & I felt that died" "NDE", but a genuine one resulting from a heroin overdose. And that experience was different from any psychedelic experience I've had. But I didn't get anything out of it at the time. Wasn't until years later that I actually took something from it & it used it to better my life. Than it became quite profound.

As Northerner has stated, moderate doses are much more beneficial than excessive ones IME. Once you learn to work with the experience it gets a lot easier. And eating 10 strips, or handfuls of dried shrooms isn't learning to work with the experience. It's just taking a ton of drugs. Been there, done that many, many times....with nothing to show for it. A moderate dose every now & again these days...with intent for personal growth has reaped much benefit in my life. Lasting changes that have improved my mental/emotional, physical & spiritual wellbeing....with correlated improvements in my life overall. It's a lot easier to learn about yourself & work through shit when you're actually present in the experience. As fascinating as shattering one's self, and the crazy visuals, etc are, that strong of an experience is just not that conducive to really working through one's shit.

Additionally, you don't need to destroy your ego to get that blank slate effect. Moderate doses are plenty to provide that imprinting period during the comedown. And frankly, it's far more likely that you'll remember what it is that you wanted to imprint if you're not dealing with learning that you're human, have a name, a life, etc, just prior to that phase of the trip.

Less is more, intent is important, set & setting are key. Things are a lot simpler knowing that. I have no desire to take more than moderate doses these days, nor to do it too often. I know what works for me. Even breaking through on DMT. Haven't done so in years, and while I feel the time has come to re-enter that space, I'm definitely not in a rush.

For youngsters & newbs among us, you're obviously not at that point, and are gonna keep chasing it. If & when it happens isn't something you can will, and it's not necessarily dose dependent either. Doesn't matter how much you take compared to the set & setting & whether or not you're just primed for the experience.

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mt cleverest said:

I think an obsession with ego death is natural. I think people get a taste maybe dip their foot in the void and thats how it starts. some ego deaths feel more complete than others and there might be a feeling thats theres a final one where the neurotic seeking energy of the I stops circling the drain and just dies permanently

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Bill_Oreilly said:

There is no ego death.

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Yes, you have a sort of a definition here.  But what it leaves out is the majority of what Buddhism (among others) teaches - and what you can experience firsthand - that recursive ego-based consciousness isn't the be-all, end-all, and only way of experience.

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if 'you' aren't there during the experience of ego death, how do you experience anything worth talking about and who is there to experience it?

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This is partly what makes the experience 'transcendent' - the fact that as 'you' slip away into oblivion for a short time, there is a dawning awareness of another type of consciousness. The 'ego' more or less corresponds to the 'phenomenal self model' in the lingo of neuroscientists such as Metzinger, but it is not the only type of consciousness in the brain.

The 'oceanic' or 'universal' state of mind that looms into consciousness presumably corresponds to meditative states focused on inner radiance e.t.c that are mentioned in buddhist literature such as the Tibetan Book of the Dead... which was the whole idea behind Leary's 'The Psychedelic Experience'.

The buddhist idea that the 'self' is an illusion, along with reality itself, suddenly takes on a new meaning when a new state of consciousness rises up to replace the normal working of your day-to-day sense of self. To me it sometimes feels as though the trip is bringing a clear message that the true nature of reality is consciousness, and the true nature of consciousness is a vast, unified field of pure reality that encompasses the entire universe...



To get an intense, lurid trip that feels like a journey to the gates of death, followed by oblivion and the rising up of a strange blissful state of mind completely outside your normal experience, followed by the massive backwash of euphoria as you return to your senses and try to make sense of it all in a state of delusional mania ... it makes for quite a trip whether you want to call it 'ego death' or not.

Bill_Oreilly said:

There is no ego death. You are either tripping or you blacked out and forgot what was going on. To talk about ego death is just as useful as Joe shmo talking about how everytime he trips he shits his pants. If you have an experience and claim you had "ego death"..rhen congrats you made something up(probably to feel like you fit in)

If you can't explain something and you're not there...then how the fuck can something be something?

To ask a question about ego death is a major jail to human language

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